Exposing pro-Israel bias, propaganda, disinformation and spin in Australia's mainstream media. Monitoring pro-Israel influence in Australia's public and political arena.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Good Refugees/Bad Refugees

There's something quite satisfying about deploying the historical record to expose the Zionist propagandists and scribblers who infest the ms media and rely on the general public's ignorance not to spot their lies and distortions.

Our scribbler this time around needs no introduction to those who follow these matters. Uber-Zionist and prolific letter writer, Michael Burd, is at it again, stoking community prejudices with yet another variation on his familiar good refugees/bad refugees theme: Jewish refugees of old good. Muslim refugees today - or illegal asylum seekers as Burd prefers to call them - bad.

Blessedly, I can spare you the entirety of Burd's latest letter. His bald assertions and groundless assumptions about those seeking entry to Australia by boat are best left to those more informed about the issue than I. I will say, however, that Burd's kind of honesty is at least preferred to that of Zionists who cloak their racism with an expressed 'concern' for every kind of refugee under the sun but one.

From the perspective of this blog, the first problem with Burd's letter is a relative bagatelle, really, but nonetheless of interest to afficionados of the Zionist propagandist's craft. The second, where Burd actually falsifies the historical record, unwittingly or not, is of more consequence:

You'll note here the deliberate omission of the definite article before 'Palestinian territories'. Its inclusion, of course, would have resulted in an admission on Burd's part that the whole of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are Palestinian. However, Burd will only grudge the Palestinians the scraps that haven't yet been encroached on by Jewish settlements, roads, army bases, military zones, checkpoints, and what have you - and even that probably only for propaganda purposes.

"It is inappropriate to compare the recent flow of illegal, predominantly economic asylum seekers, to the Jewish refugees genuinely fleeing Europe in the 1930s and '40s. Jews who were lucky enough to be allowed entry into Australia, did not bring with them any hatred of Germans, Poles or other Europeans who assisted the Nazi war machine. These Jewish refugees did not seek revenge nor did they bring with them any prejudice or intolerance." (ibid)

Unfortunately, the facts reveal otherwise. When Harold Holt, as Minister for Immigration in the post-war Menzies Government, proposed mass German immigration into Australia in the early 50s, the organised Jewish community was adamantly opposed, as the following extracts from The Sydney Jewish News illustrates:

"Australia is one of the few places on earth in need of people. Those who are coming to her shores now will decide her fate and future... But... we must have Germans, we are told. Why? Because they are most readily available. No wonder! Having plunged Europe into 4 successive wars within a 100 years and set the world ablaze in two world conflagrations within 25 years they are now ready to leave the ruins of their own making. But, who wants creators of ruins? Let us indulge in the unhappy visualisation of an Australia into which Germans have imported their talents for hate and national intolerance. Are we to see goose-stepping Australians, uniformed youngsters and the rule of the bludgeon and of the Secret Police, as might happen within 50 years of German mass immigration into this country?... Surely, we Jews (but particularly Jewish immigrants to Australia during the last 15 years) are experts on Germans and on Nazism." (Rabbi HM Sanger, 5/1/51)

"An Emergency Fund to meet the costs of a state wide campaign against the proposed mass migration of Germans to Australia was launched by Mr S Steigrad at last Tuesday's meeting of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies." (Board launches emergency fund to fight German migration, 19/1/51)

"The duty of refuge is a duty to the oppressed, not the oppressors. There can be no duty of asylum towards the murderers of millions of women and children, nor even to those who merely acquiesced in it. The 100,000 Germans who are to be brought out here were all content to live under a Nazi Government with a Nazi programme which openly advocated barbarity. True enough, many of them are miserable now. But this, with rare exceptions, is the misery of the frustrated 'Herrenvolk' and not of the repentant sinner... Even if by a miracle - and it would have to be a miracle - screening were 90% effective, Australia would still be honeycombed with 10,000 fanatically indoctrinated Nazis in 4 years." (Professor Julius Stone, 16/2/51)

"Organisers of the campaign against mass German immigration yesterday said that last Monday's overflow meeting in the Sydney Town Hall would swell public opposition against the Federal Government's immigration policy." (Packed Town Hall meeting seen as start of bigger anti-German migration campaign, 2/3/51)

These displays of prejudice and intolerance (for that is what they are) on the part of Sydney's Jewish community in the early 50s are at least understandable in the context of the Nazi genocide of the war years. Burd, however, has no such excuse for his particular displays of prejudice and intolerance.